Cultural - The Trash!

How does trash pick up work over here?

First of all, I guess I should tell you what I grew up with. My parents live/d in Dade City, FL starting when I was a teenager. I don’t know how the trash system worked out in WA state earlier in my life.

My mom and dad had/have a dumpster in the front pasture area - it is emptied once a week in the middle of the night. As recently as a few years ago it was $15/month. It may have gone up to $20/ month. That’s once a week!

This year our trash costs here have gone up tremendously. Yes, here in Poland. Yes, people have complained.

First of all, we do not get any sort of container given to us now. We had been using some dumpsters given by the garbage company and when they changed things up a few years ago now, we opted to buy them from them—about $50 for each dumpster. I think they were glad to get rid of them!

i was glad to buy them since we can throw a bit bigger things in it than just a garbage bag should we want to.

The dumpsters actually only cost us about $50 each to BUY. We had one for us here at the house and one for the church. The one for the church has migrated to our house since the town where the church is has changed their policies and we now don’t have any trash pickup there. We just bring it home with us.

Nowadays in Poland, you choose if you want to separate your trash into recyclables or not separate.

They pick up recycleds once a month depending on the part of town you live in. For us, it’s the second Saturday of every month - put the bags in front of your house by the road - the truck stops and picks them up. They then throw new plastic bags in your yard for you to use for the next month. It’s nice that they provide those free of charge! (well….we pay for it!) A separate truck comes by and picks up the glass. Our categories are three - plastic/metal, paper, and glass.

Then, there are those things that just are general trash - not separated. We get that picked up every other week on Tuesdays.

They offer no containers. People just put their trash in bags or their own cans out front of their house along the road.

We bought our dumpster so we move the dumpster to the side of the road on the days - when we remember. Now that we are down to just the two of us, we don’t actually create a tremendous amount of trash since we do burn a lot of the burnables.

And the cost?

It has gone up tremendously from being a ‘non issue’ as a bill to being something to think about. They base it on how many are in the household. Now that we have only 2, it’s not too bad, but for the last few years, each year, the price keeps going up.

We think there must be a lot of people who don’t pay at all and those of who do pay have to cover for them.

Since we do separate our trash, we get a break on our trash bill, and it is 31,50 zl per person. If we didn’t separate our trash it would be 63 zl per person.

Thankfully when our kids were all home, this wasn’t the case! With 5 kids at home, our trash bill, if we separated would be $50.10 or $104/month if we didn’t separate!

Right now for just the two of us we pay $15 at the current exchange rate for the two of us. I can’t help but think that my mom gets a better deal with weekly pickup with the dumpster provided by the company than we do here.

I’m not complaining - but I do feel for the people who have big families now. It’s expensive!

Anyway… it’s just a little something that’s possibly different than you have there where you live! At least they come and pick it up for us!!!!!!!!!! I’m grateful we don’t have to take it to a dump somewhere!

Oh…and what happens if you “say you separate” (and thus pay less) but don’t actually do it? We’ve heard the fines are very high. Naturally they would have to come by and check out your trash as the truck drives by, however. Otherwise, there is no way for them to know whose trash came from where once it is gone into the truck. I haven’t actually heard of it happening around here.

I expect some day that they will not give you the choice and just tell you to separate your trash…and have everyone just pay the same price.

Anyway…not really important - just one of those things we have here in Poland that maybe you have where you live!

---

Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store!

---

---